Homage to Catalonia

<p><strong>A <em>National Review </em>Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Century<br /><br />"One of Orwell's very best books and perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War."--<em>The New Yorker</em></strong><br /><br />In 1936 originally intending merely to report on the Spanish Civil War as a journalist George Orwell found himself embroiled as a participant--as a member of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unity. Fighting against the Fascists he described in painfully vivid and occasionally comic detail life in the trenches--with a "democratic army" composed of men with no ranks no titles and often no weapons--and his near fatal wounding. As the politics became tangled Orwell was pulled into a heartbreaking conflict between his own personal ideals and the complicated realities of political power struggles.<br /><br />Considered one of the finest works by a man V. S. Pritchett called "the wintry conscience of a generation" <em>Homage to Catalonia</em> is both Orwell's memoir of his experiences at the front and his tribute to those who died in what he called a fight for common decency. This edition features a new foreword by Adam Hochschild placing the war in greater context and discussing the evolution of Orwell's views on the Spanish Civil War.<br /><br />"No one except George Orwell . . . made the violence and self-dramatization of Spain so burning and terrible."-- Alfred Kazin <em>New York Times</em><br /><br />"A wise book one that once read will never be forgotten."--<em>Chicago Sunday Tribune</em></p>